Co Star or Ouya

Hi guys, I was hoping I could get some opinions on my situation. In my front room I have a projector and 120' inch screen. (the 120' isn't relevant, just awesome.) All I have hooked up to it is an xbox 360 and now the Co Star. I needed some way to make it smart. And there is absolutely no way that I am going to pay microsoft so I can use the 360s streaming option. That would piss me off so much, I don't care how much I would have to pay to not do it. I'm so glad that Sony is owning them right now. Anyway, for what I need the Co Star is great. I have had it for 3 days now and it is better than I expected. Probably because I read so many bad reviews. But, the Ouya comes out within my return period. And lets face it, the best product like these is the one that sells the most. The Ouya is going to be hacked and made to do anything it possibly can. Probably even boot straight to Google Tv. Which would be great because Amazon instant video is more important than light gaming. Is it safe to say that the Tegra 3 can run circles around the Co Star? From what I can tell, the Co Star can barely handle solitaire. And I know there will be an added expense of a keyboard but it the CO Star could handle light gaming I am sure I would buy a controller. So what are your guys opinions?

If you are talking gaming, light or heavy, the Ouya is definitely the right unit for ya. Eventually the frustrations of trying to use the Co-Star in the way you describe will become overwhelming. My advice, return the Co-Star while you can. If later you want and have need for some of the superb features of GTV, then maybe you will have more to choose from in new GTV devices or software upgrades to 2nd & 3rd gen units.

IMO the OUYA will always be much more "open" than Google TV. But you won't be able to hack the GTV Amazon app to run on OUYA because it has special DRM. So if you want an open box for hacking and such I would go with the OUYA. But if you want the Amazon app go with GTV.

GTV will be adding hardware support for DRM with the Jellybean update - so it will probably also have some more apps besides Amazon that won't run on OUYA. I think NBC is a possibility and has been rumored for GTV. But as I said GTV will be more "locked down". There is a cloud gaming service called "Ubitus" that is supposed to be coming to GTV this year. They were at Google I/O.

One other thing to consider is that the GTV Jellybean update will remove Flash from the GTV browser. We won't know for sure if a Flash workaround will be successful on GTV until after the Jellybean rolls out and we can do some testing. I believe there will probably be a hack for Flash on the OUYA.

I say keep the Google TV box. I can think of several Kickstarter projects that turned out be complete and total duds but can't recall any that delivered on the hype. That doesn't mean Ouya won't be great but I am sure skeptical. Google TV may not have much in the way of useful hacks but I use it almost daily and think it works great.

Thank you for your replies. I'm still not sure. But I did get thinking that I have a Nexus 7. It has a Tegra 3 in it, although probably toned down for battery and heat restraints. But it is a good test to see if it can handle everything I want in a smart tv. It definitely has a lot of advantages over the Co Star. I can stream WTV files over my network from my HTPC and use MX Player to play them. I don't think that is a possibility on GTV. GTV does have an important thing that Android doesn't and that is Amazon instant video. I'm torn, I need Amazon. Do you guys think that GTV will get ported to the OUYA. I wish the OUYA peeps would just say for sure if Amazon has an app for it and I wish the Jelly Bean update comes to GTV in the next week.

What it all comes down to IMO is whether a device like the Ouya (or any of the Android TV devices) will have apps that work well from a couch with a remote. I'd prefer not to use a game pad to watch video. And licensing can make things very persnickety if for instance the HBO GO app that works great on your phone won't run on an Ouya or is limited to low resolution or some other annoyance.

T3 will run circles around the CPU in the CoStar.. and its very likely you'll have much more fun with the Ouya.. BUT.. it may or may not handle all the DRM issues (more open tends to equal less support for items requiring DRM).

What's hard to say is how much the update to JB will/won't help the Co-Star. But that won't be known until it shows up.

I just sideloaded a VLC nightly on my N7... whine.... so much we are missing on the Co-Star at this point.